


Drink to Me

by R00bs_Teacup



Series: Platonic Valentine gifts 2017 [1]
Category: Rosemary and Thyme
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 18:14:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9778586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R00bs_Teacup/pseuds/R00bs_Teacup
Summary: Two toasts





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/gifts).



> For Glim, I decide d to give rando valentines ficlets this year because yep. Reasons. As you say, bb, platonic love is real love :)

At the end of a day on the job, they climb into the landrover and puff and putter back to wherever they are staying. That is the routine. This time, though, Rosemary shakes her head when Laura goes to get into the car. 

“What?” Laura asks, tired and aching. 

“We can leave it here. It’s five minutes,” Rosemary says, smiling that little amused, mocking smile. Tilting her head toward the house. Along the footpath. 

“You want to walk. We’ve been on our feet all day,” Laura grumbles. 

Rosemary holds out her hand though, and then starts off, her hand still held out behind her. Laura sighs and catches up, taking the offer. Her feet hurt, her back and shoulders ache, and they’ve been outside in the cold sunshine since nine this morning. Rosemary gives her a secret look and grins, pulling out a KitKat. Laura gives in, with ill grace. It is nice, to hold Rosemary’s hand, out here in the middle of nowhere. They’re staying in a cottage at the edge of the land, and the big house is empty of residents at the moment. It’s just them, and the setting sun. Rosemary’s hand is warm in hers. 

“We should have brought the landrover,” Rosemary says, coming to an abrupt halt in sight of the cottage. 

“What?!”

“Could’ve gone for chips,” Rosemary says. 

“We have wine. You can cook,” Laura says, letting go Rosemary’s hand and making for home. “I’m having first shower.”

She pours them both glasses of the wine, and leaves Rosemary’s out. She also takes a quick shower and leaves hot water, and Rosemary’s in there gets the heating on and a fire lit in the living-room. Rosemary set it this morning, so she just has to light a match. She’s the one who showed Rosemary how to do it, though. So she can still take the credit. She renews their wine and settles on the sofa, with the laptop, bringing Google Hangouts up so Matty can call later, and they can say happy birthday to baby Theodore. 

“I thought of a solution,” Rosemary says, coming to lean in the doorway in a dressing gown, hair up in a turban. “Oh, it’s warm in here.”

She doesn’t tell Laura the solution, just comes and sits on the sofa, thigh pressed to Laura’s, basking in the fire heat.

“Matt and Theo don’t need you in your dressing gown,” Laura says, nudging with an elbow. 

“They’ve seen worse. I have my jammies on under,” Rosemary says, not moving. “Use that to get us a takeaway, Laura.”

“Can’t get wine on take out,” Laura points out, holding up her empty glass. “The bottle’s empty.”

“There’s another, in the cupboard,” Rosemary says. “Get us a pizza and I’ll get the wine.”

Laura considers, and decides that is a deal she can agree to, it means she doesn’t have to move. Rosemary gets up with a groan. She comes back with the wine, without the turban, hair damp on her shoulders. Laura grumbles at her until she gets the towel and sits, turned sideways, so Laura can dry her hair. 

“It’s valentines day,” Rosemary says. 

“Is it?” Laura says. “Nick once bought me one of those.. Those tiny bears holding a heart? He got it at the garage for fifty pee, was proper proud of himself. It was on offer, he said, pleased as punch. Of course it was on offer, it was three days late.”

“Ah,” Rosemary says. Then she laughs and leans forward to top up Laura’s glass, passing it to her, holding up her own. “To other days, and better ways of saying I love you.”

Laura drinks to that. 

Later, she watches Rosemary asleep, in the bed beside her, and traces the lines of her face, her shoulders, her body beneath the blankets. Every familiar and dear shape and shift of her. The mutter, the change in breathing as she changes position, the expressions chasing over her face as she dreams. She turns more into Laura and settles, her expression setting to a smile. They’ve just slowly become this, without anything changing really. They’d been sharing their lives for a long time, and now they just share their lives in a better way. It’s so much warmer than with Nick, Rosemary loves her, and Laura knows that. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t look young or blonde. No wigs, this time around. Rosemary doesn’t make lewd jokes or pinch her bum, either. She pats it, now and then, when she wants Laura to do more gardening, or to let her know she’s going for tea, or something.

To better ways of falling in love, Laura thinks. She has fallen in love, too. So long ago she can’t trace it. Maybe even all the way back at the start. With the quick energy and enthusiasm and calmnesses of Rosemary, with her smile and laugh, and her sheer enjoyment of Laura. A much better way of falling in love, to fall in love with yourself along the way. To see what they see, and teach them the good that you see, and know yourself and them and everything in between. Everything. To have everything. Rosemary opens her eyes to slits, whacks Laura across the back and mutters something incoherent, tugging her closer until she’s almost smothered. Laura supposed it’s an injunction to sleep, and does as she’s told with very little grumbling, all things considered. 

A week later, back home, Matt drops Theodore off and promises not to be too long, and then admits he’ll probably be gone overnight. Laura gives him a telling off and Rosemary takes Theo into the kitchen to do some baking or growing of herbs or something. She always likes spending time with Theo. It’s not that Laura doesn’t enjoy it, but she’s had kids, and while she loves her grandson a lot, she’s also not got the patience to let him do as he pleases, and somehow she’s become the strict granny. While Rosemary would let him get away with anything but murder (because they do have some lines they don’t cross) and has become ‘Gummy’. While Laura is plain old ‘Gran’.

“Gran, Gummy says that it’s true you love her,” Theo says, tugging at Laura’s hand. 

“Right. Matt, go away, come back a better son,” she says, then she kisses him and tell him she loves him and he leaves, and she lifts Theo up. “What? Of course it’s true. Come on.”

“But you didn’t give her a val-tine,” Theo says, resting his little head on her shoulder with a huge huge sigh. “I gave Dad a valatin, and Mum a valatin, I brought for you and Gummy some heart cookies. But no val-tines here.”

“Nap time. First I’ll show you all the many valentines there are here, though,” Laura says. She stops in front of the framed photo of her, Matt and Helena hanging on the wall in the hall. “Gummy gave me this, to hang here, because a lot of the photos I had have got Grandad in, and I didn’t want that.”

She shows Theo the cushion she gave Rosemary, and the silly donkey reindeer from that Christmas on the vineyard. The painting she bought for Rosemary because it reminded her of the roses they replanted. The keyring Rosemary gave her last week. The magnets on the fridge from holidays and work holidays. The pictures on the wall in the kitchen, stuck to a magnet board. The shelves of Kilner jars she bought for Rosemary’s drying herbs and flowers and teas. The quilt they have on their bed that belonged to Rosemary’s mother, given as a present to them both. All the things that they’ve surrounded themselves, with their stories. 

“They’re just things,” she tells Theo, settling him in their bed, wrapped in the quilt. “But behind that, there’s something that’s special to us. Valentines is about loving each other, and we do that all the time. Gummy and me don’t do cards and presents, because we don’t want to. Doesn’t mean I don’t love her.”

“Yeah,” Theo agrees, closing his eyes, yawning. 

Laura leaves him to it and sneaks out to Rosemary, who’s sat in the kitchen laughing, a cup of tea in hand. 

“How many stories did you make up?” she asks. 

“Pretty much all of them,” Laura admits. “We haven’t got many sentimental things around here.”

“Maybe we should get some. Heart shaped things,” Rosemary says, smiling widely, amused again. 

“Shut up. I could show him the garden,” Laura says, and Rosemary quiets with a grumbling scrunch of her face. Laura smiles, stealing her tea. “You plant all those things out there for something, all of them have stories. I know.”

“Damn it,” Rosemary says. “I don’t mean to. Get your own tea, that’s mine.”

“It’s disgusting,” Laura says, giving it back and making herself a proper, respectable cup of builders. 

“It’s Lapsang. I like it,” Rosemary says, taking a defiant sip. “I did buy you a present, you know. For Valentines. Before you swore off it and were grumpy and made me feel ridiculous.”

“Liar.”

“I bought it from Tesco earlier today,” Rosemary says. “Still counts. Here.”

It’s a bottle of goodish wine and a box of chocolates. Laura raises her eyebrows. Rosemary takes both back, and pours them glasses, and helps herself to a chocolate. Laura gets rid of the tea and sits beside Rosemary, backs to the table, looking out at the garden. 

“To this way of loving,” she says, holding up her glass.

Rosemary drinks to that.


End file.
